Michael Swickard's new novel about New Mexico

Inside the White House political advisors are smarting from the president's drop in the polls. They have concluded that misleading potential voters about his bad energy policies should be "job one." So next week President Obama will visit oil and gas fields on public lands in Carlsbad, New Mexico in an effort to obfuscate the policies he has implemented to make it harder to develop domestic energy supplies.Unfortunately for Obama, the public is becoming painfully aware of the broader implications of his recent rejection of the Keystone XL Pipeline. Instead of him getting out of the way so hundreds of thousands of jobs and million of barrels of politically and militarily secure oil can be had, the nation, living a green energy fantasy he induced, is once again paying sky high gas prices.

With China and India’s demand for oil on a steady path higher, the president’s calls for higher U.S. government mandates on gas mileage as a meaningful solution to his refusal to allow us to produce are ringing hollow. And just this week Obama allies like Senator Chuck Schumer called on the “Saudis” (of all people) to promise to pump more of their oil to reduce prices, instead of allowing Americans to do the same. Again this week the president and fellow Democrats rejected calls to open the frozen swamp coastlands of northern Alaska to oil production despite the fact that geologists conservatively estimate that these fields alone could replace every single barrel of oil the U.S. imports from Saudi Arabia. Oh yes, and this America first policy would also pave the way for hundreds of billions of dollars in new tax revenue and hundreds of thousands of jobs at the same time.

What president Obama won’t tell the people in Eddy County New Mexico next week (or those who watch his sound bytes on television), is that he has made sure more than 90% of all federal lands are off limits to energy exploration. He also won’t tell those who attend the charade that he has instructed the U.S. Department of Energy to make the securing of permits for new oil production a nightmare. And no doubt he will fail to mention the billions of taxpayer dollars he pissed away on loan guarantees to his buddies at Solyndra while calling it the way to secure our future. You can also bet the president will somehow forget to remind us that his Energy Secretary Steven Chu said he hopes for gas prices in the U.S. to be the same as they are in Europe ($8 a gallon).

No fellow New Mexicans, instead the president will sweep into New Mexico on the gas guzzling Air Force One. And instead of helping produce more of the energy he so readily consumes himself, he and his huge entourage will hop in a bunch of gas guzzling limousines and head off to a cynical photo opportunity. There Obama will, with a perfectly straight face, explain why he is so proud of all the good people working in the oil fields in New Mexico. He won’t disclose the fact that he fights to kill their jobs almost every single day.

It is a safe bet the presidential motorcade will flatten a few sand dune lizards on the way out to the Eddy County oil fields. And in the meantime you can bet his Fish and Wildlife Department will use dubious interpretations of the Endangered Species Act as part of their legal maneuvers to "save" those same lizards by putting the same oil fields off limits to production. In the end, Obama does everything he can to insure that how much we pay to put gas in our own cars and fuel up the presidential motorcade and Air Force One will go even higher.

One more thought. You can count on progressive Democrats from all over Northern New Mexico to drive in their own gas powered cars, trucks, and SUV’s to Carlsbad so they can declare in unison what a wonderful royal outfit Emperor Obama is wearing, while the rest of us realize he has no clothes.